#breaking a backlog

Case in point - I played for ten hours before writing this review, and I unlocked precisely zero achievements. Xbox statistics give the percentage of players that have won the most common achievement (beating an NPC in a drinking minigame) at just 6.6%. I’m not surprised either - the glacial pace the game moves at made those 10 hours feel like 20. As a completionist, in some ways I’m glad this one never got officially added to the gamercard, because the full 1000g will take you an absolute minimum of 60 hours.

It’s really disappointing, because the concept sounded appealing and the art style is pretty nice. The game is stingy on details, and quests are less than intuitive to solve - an early ghost hunt saw me trying to chase down a vandal on several different days, failing thanks to an offscreen movement behind a rock that didn’t seem interactable, even using my spirit vision. Another saw me waiting til 3am multiple nights in a row for a spectre that would never spawn - it turned out that the two conversations I had about the late night noises and hidden door weren’t enough to trigger the appearance, and I needed a third talk to repeat some of the info before it would spawn in. It doesn’t feel like a purposeful journey to discover information, but like you’re fumbling in the dark to figure out what the game actually wants.

The controls are needlessly complex, requiring several button presses to open the inventory, pick up and stow items, or check your quests. I imagine they were designed for (and likely work well on) PC first, but they just don’t fit with a controller. Serving customers in the bathhouse works well, but with the sheer amount of mechanics crammed in, the rest of the game suffers. In an attempt to imitate the games that came before it, Spirittea also features fishing, cooking and even bug hunting. These control just as awkwardly as the rest of the game, requiring pixel perfect aim on a very imperfect grid or super detailed recipes with no guide on where to find the ingredients you need. It’s like the game is just waiting for you to make a mistake and waste your ingredients, lose your catch or get stung by a bug. Well, at least you can enjoy the bathhouse sections, right? Wrong.

The spirits themselves need to be seated when they do arrive in your bathhouse, involving another guessing game to work out what season each beast is a part of and how that should play into your seating system. I’m aware that there’s a few pages of an old book you can eventually dig up that give you hints on this, but it’s another level of unnecessary complexity that just serves to make this even more of a slog than before. I can handle some strange mechanics with a pretty high learning curve (Cultist Simulator my beloved) but even pushing double digits on this one didn’t help - it’s just exhausting to manage and not even satisfying to work out your own system.

Whilst I didn’t enjoy my time with Spirittea, I did appreciate the Japanese setting and lore, and it could be better enjoyed if you play it in shorter bursts, perhaps. Since I played it through Game Pass, I didn’t spend any money on it, which is a pretty damning plus to point out. I hope the devs are able to focus down in the future and maybe work on a smaller, tighter game that doesn’t fall prey to the over complicated controls and mechanics of this one. Still, Spirittea did accomplish one good thing for me - it inspired me to reinstall Stardew Valley!

Pros:

• Pleasant aesthetic and graphical style

• Does offer multiplayer coop mode

• Bathhouse mechanics do work well, at least for the basics

Cons:

• So overstuffed with content that it can’t progress with any pace

Players are dropped into the deep end with a fairly detailed character creator right at the start, allowing you to create an avatar with custom hair and clothing styles, a personality that impacts the walk cycle of your space explorer and even a selection between 7 different playable races. I have to give a particular shoutout to the way this system provides information in an accessible way without limiting choices - you get a short paragraph of world building for each race, and a number of the options change based on your pick. Florans (plant-people) get foliage instead of hair, Glitch folk (sort of robots with Medieval values) get a tongue-in-cheek male or female plug adaptor instead of Venus and Mars symbols for gender, and each kind of alien receives a different set of randomised names to ensure you feel well immersed in the lore of your chosen culture. It was a really encouraging start that helped me get into the atmosphere right from the beginning.

Starbound leans into a lot of the sci-fi tropes you’d expect in the best way. You wake up on a space station ready to graduate as a Protector, the closest thing to a Starfleet officer you can get without copyright infringement. You’re immediately furnished with a somewhat sarcastic, deadpan AI that consistently underestimates your chances of survival, and your ceremony is interrupted by a monster attack, forcing you to dive into the nearest escape vehicle and zip into unexplored territory. It’s classic for a reason, and I was super charmed by the loving homage the creators built in this intro sequence.

Once you wake up on your ship, you hit the more standard gameplay loop. At this point, it’s almost impossible not to compare Starbound to Terraria. You break blocks and build a settlement on a flat-seeming planet with plenty hiding beneath the surface, advancing through various crafting tables to improve your armour, weapons and tools. Eventually, you want to convince NPCs to move into dwellings, build yourself some storage space and decorate to your liking. The twist from Starbound is the quests, encouraging you to explore many different worlds and progress the story. You’ll scan items and shoot down bandits to earn your keep and find rare upgrades, and it’s a great way to see the universe. There’s a lot less grinding for rare drops than I remember from Terraria too, and you can teleport back to your ship when needed to either turn in valuables or even zip off to an outpost you unlock after the first few missions.

This friendly planet includes a varied cast of NPCs and vendors, offering pets, teleportation points and far more to explore. There is a surprisingly deep cooking system too, which, if you’re playing on the standard Survival difficulty, you’ll need to play around with in order to stay on top of your hunger. It sounds like a lot, but everything is introduced pretty slowly, though I do wish the crafting tutorial were a little earlier, as that’s the main area where I felt lost early on. Survival game veterans can go straight into permadeath hardcore mode, but I was happy on the standard difficulty - it does seem like you can’t change midway though, so choose carefully.

I’ve compared Starbound to several other media franchises in this review, but please don’t think that that’s a negative. Sure, it isn’t reinventing the wheel, but not every game needs to completely change the formula. Starbound is an upgrade from a classic, reliable wagon wheel to a sturdy rubber tyre - you can keep going without it, but the change is generally smooth, looks much sleeker than before and will extend your mileage far further than you might think. If you like space games or creative survival titles, you’ll fit right in here. Even if you don’t, I’d say Starbound is worth a shot - it certainly charmed me!

Pros:

• Controls are busy but manageable, with options to rebind if you prefer

• I love the world created by the devs here, filled with small details that make it feel lived in

• Superb range of planets to explore

Cons:

• Might be too much for newbies to the genre

We started with Quiplash 3. If the number in the title didn’t clue you in, you might already be aware that Quiplash has been around since the very first Jackbox Party Pack, and they’ve never strayed far from the winning formula. Two players are given the same prompt and compete to write the funniest answer, voted by the others in the room. It’s a simple game that is perfect for a warm-up, but like many less complex offerings, gets a bit stale if you do more than two rounds in a row. The third edition does improve on previous titles, with a much better final round and a pleasantly weird sort of play-doh aesthetic. I’d recommend you use it as a way to stretch out your comedy muscles and get into something meatier before it wears out it’s welcome.

Next up for us was Talking Points, which takes an old improv game and streamlines it down to a perfect art form. Players suggest presentation titles, then shuffle them around and give an improvised talk on all manner of ridiculous topics. Each presenter is given an assistant, who picks out the visuals for their talk, and choosing the funniest images is a make or break moment for a lot of prompts. Like several other Jackbox titles, this is a more collaborative effort than a competitive one, and you’ll have much more fun throwing engagement points out left right and centre than trying to optimise your own score. With a more confident group, this one can really shine, but you need to fully commit to your prompt to get the most out of it. Go big with your TED talker impressions and try to second guess your speakers with your image choices, and you’ll have a lot of fun here so long as you don’t mind being the centre of attention for a little while.

Champ’d Up, as the sole drawing game of the pack, has a lot of pull for artistic groups, but can still be thoroughly enjoyed by those of us who struggle with stick figures. You design a character to champion a specific category, then are given someone else’s fighter and tasked with drawing an opponent. The twist? Your second artwork has to be made without knowledge of the category you’re fighting in. It’s a great blend of guesswork and creative problem solving that is made better by the dramatic announcements and opportunities to make your chosen fighter dance around as the votes come in. I do wish the prompts were a little more customisable (who wants to design the ‘Champion of Futons’?) but overall it’s a pretty fun game for creative types and if you play it midway through a session, it can be a fantastic opportunity for callbacks.

The fourth game we tried out was The Devils and The Details, which is one of the more complicated picks for a party game. Players control devils taking on the role of a stereotypical suburban family (being cast as teens, kids or parents) and attempt to complete regular human tasks made up of mini games and little cooperative puzzles to solve together. Some can only be done with other players helping out, and there are also opportunities to cause the group problems but earn yourself big points by doing ‘selfish’ tasks, like learning curse words as a kid or staring out the window in silence as a parent. If you want something deeper to sink your teeth into, there are plenty of challenges to take on here, but it’s a bit difficult to manage all the crosstalk and complexity for larger groups. It’s a better pick for smaller crowds, but I’d say it’s mostly worth it with a more dedicated group of gamers than trying to pull casual fans into this one.

Finally, we come to the obligatory weak game of the pack - Blather Round. It’s an interesting concept that plays sort of like Articulate - describe a well-known story, person or thing using only pre-generated phrases. The sentences you can make get more specific as time goes on, and you can draw words from previous guesses to tell the other players if they’re getting close. Unfortunately, this title struggles to provide balanced difficulty, and most prompts end up either pathetically easy or far too hard to complete. It’s good for virtual meet-ups, since it won’t be hampered by voice lag or technical difficulties, but it’s frustratingly inconsistent to play and could pretty easily be replaced by a second round of Talking Points or a game from another pack.

Overall, Jackbox 7 has a pretty solid line-up with a low concentration of disappointments. The focus on presenting your answers in Talking Points (and to an extent arguing your point in Champ’d Up and Devils) means that more extroverted groups will probably prefer this to other offerings, but introverts will still find plenty of fun to be had. If you’ve never played a Jackbox Party Pack before, it’s a solid way into the series that will have you being the one to suggest it at all your future gatherings in no time.

Pros:

• Excellent value for money - it’s 5 games in one!

• Great way to draw non-gamers in, as you don’t need complex controls and can simply use your phone

• Most games work brilliantly both in-person and virtually

Cons:

• Blather Round is a bit of a weak point

Well, Party Hard 2 seems to have learned little from the successes of the original and instead has chosen to expand on the mistakes they avoided first time around. Instead of sticking to the action, the sequel spends its time on animated cutscenes that mythologise the ‘Party Hard Killer’, giving complex motives and connections to a character who spent the first game luring people into standing behind stallions and dancing so badly he got his ass kicked. There’s a new crafting system that is poorly explained, leaving you to guess at the purpose of the objects you find in levels, and the AI of the game’s NPCs feels much less responsive and far dumber than it used to be.

There’s almost certainly an element of rose tinted glasses colouring my memories of Party Hard, but it’s almost impossible to compare the two without the sequel coming up short. A key feature I enjoyed from the first game was that the police adapted to your strategies and changed the game as you worked through a level. If you used a shortcut too many times while escaping the cops, a handyman would come to block it off. This behaviour is almost nonexistent in the second title - you can easily bounce between air vent openings to stall police almost infinitely, so long as you don’t let them get too close.

There are more unique characters in each level, but they feel less individual, and don’t have any of the quirks that made the NPCs feel smart. A security guard is a little more aggro than a standard partygoer, and always drops a stun gun, but otherwise can be knifed like a regular chump. A cop is a nigh-unkillable robot with the mind of a roomba, who shrugs off stab wounds but takes a nap from a taser and is replaced on the next 911 call if you do put in the effort to lure him into a trap. A maid is no different to any other victim, except for the fact that she simply can’t be killed, because the devs are too proud of her unique sprite. To put it bluntly, it’s simply frustrating. You’re far more likely to fail a level because you get bored and start tossing items around than because a character really surprises you, and if they do pull something unexpected, it feels less like a cool interaction and more like the rules have been changed to spite you.

Party Hard 2 does have more content on offer than the 2016 title did, with the option to play as several different killers and mix up the playstyle you use. There are new options to complete levels without simply wiping out all the hapless party animals (the only win condition in the first Party Hard) that do add a greater level of replayability, as well as secret tasks that can lead to some fun Easter eggs as you hunt for them in each of the 14 levels. I especially appreciate the posters in certain areas that allow you to call in new character to the scene, like adding a circus bear to the mix in an early club setting. The graphics are also improved, taking the pixel art the series began with and making it feel more like a purposeful choice, with some levels looking downright gorgeous at times. So why be so harsh on the shortcomings?

Well, because developer Pinokl Games has already done it right before. Party Hard thrived on simplicity, tapping in to the over-the-top fantasy of every tired adult being kept awake by a loud party on a night where all they want is some good sleep. Party Hard 2 promised to do the same, but instead falls flat, over-complicating the system and ringing hollow like a mediocre baseline from the next room over. I really wanted to like this game, and it kept missing the mark. It’s hard not to feel like, despite all the extra polish, Party Hard 2 has lost the magic.

Pros:

• Superb visuals look really good

• Discovering secret objectives is always fun

• Awesome soundtrack does make it hard not to party too

Cons:

• Frustrating difficulty curve feels unfair at times

As usual with the scarier games I review, I roped a housemate into helping me face my fears and started the campaign with a second pair of eyes on hand. The game is set during 1996, and it shows in the incredibly charming PC menus you’ll need to navigate to begin. Controls are relatively simple, and are almost always on screen when you want them, though they can be hidden with the press of a button too. Unfortunately, this doesn’t hide the boxes behind them, leaving some odd spacing on the UI, but it’s a forgivable offence.

The first day introduces your supervisor, Carol, and allows ample time to adjust to the mechanics and settle in to the atmosphere. The supernatural elements bubble to the surface starting on day 2 - odd emails on your computer set the tone before the day even begins, warning you to leave before it’s too late. Play through this day, and the next email tells you that now you know too much. For an optional interaction, these emails add a great deal to the story, and I’d definitely recommend taking your time and messing around with all aspects of the desktop to avoid missing out.

Things get stranger and stranger as the days go on. By the third day, Wednesday, your computer system is experiencing glitches that prevent you from looking back at entries while callers are on the line, encouraging you to memorise the logs you’re given. It’s a great way to keep up the tension, as is the sudden loudness of the incoming call tone. Everything feels purposefully designed to keep you slightly on edge, which is amazing considering you’re never directly faced with any dangers. The voice acting is a little over the top, especially for certain callers, but principal characters do a great job and even the wackier performances add to the unique charm for me.

Without spoiling anything, I can tell you that the game ends on Sunday, testing your knowledge of all the calls you’ve solved so far and all the beasties that have yet to appear. One downside of Home Safety Hotline is extremely limited replayability, as every day plays out the same each time. It’s nice that the ending pulls in some of the lesser used hazards, but a sort of randomised mode for after the story would be perfect, although for an indie title with limited voice acting, I understand this might be hard to implement. As is, once you’ve finished the game, it’s hard to see many reasons to go back, except to figure out the correct response to anything you got wrong before.

Still, for the time you’ll spend with it, Home Safety Hotline is a satisfyingly made observational horror title that definitely appeals to me and my fellow scaredy-cats more than it would to fans of jumpscares or visual gore. The framing allows me to satisfy my natural curiosity for the macabre without relying on peaking adrenaline with sudden movements, and the art book you unlock after the game proved to me that the developers clearly had a blast putting it all together, which I always love to see. Turn off the lights and play this one all in one sitting for the best effect, and watch out for pesky prank calls.

Pros:

• The 90s-inspired aesthetics are delightful

• All the optional content from the desktop is well worth watching and reading

• Perfect for cowards like me who can’t deal with more action-focused horror tropes

Cons:

• Low level of replayability

Very little is explained to you when you first launch into Cultist Simulator - you are an aspiring occult fanatic, looking to find your place in the world and form a cult to increase your standing. Controls are given in the options menu, and a measured build-up of abilities introduces you to the core gameplay loop. You receive tiles, you place them under an appropriate verb (work, study, explore, etc…) and they produce new tiles. The actual buttons for this operation require trial and error, but at least the timer element doesn’t come into play until you’ve done this a few times.

When you get the hang of the dense controls, you may still be a little confused on what exactly your goal is, mechanically. I found actually starting my cult fairly difficult - not due to the requirements, but because the operation was hidden in the ‘miscellaneous’ timeline. Your verbs are on the ‘main’ timeline, but pressing up on the D-pad takes you to another area with the actions you don’t have direct control over. Missing this led to the death of my first run - when a Despair event occurs, Dread cards start to build up here, and if you hit 3 without a Contentment card to counter them, you lose.

Starting another run, I explored some more and got things running with a cult dedicated to the Grail, one of the eight lore aspects. You need enough funds to not get ill, and you can recruit new cultists by speaking about lore tiles, that much made sense. I also had a goal card for Sensation, which, once confirmed using the ‘dream’ verb, told me I would need to ‘work’ this goal with… ‘The Know’. Another roadblock, as I had no idea what this was, but this felt like an intentional part of the Cultist Simulator experience, rather than a poor menu decision. Blindly fumbling with my tiles, I realised that plugging lore fragments into my dreams allowed me to progress through a realm of occult challenges, including eventually attaining ‘The Know’ and progressing my goal.

During this time, I had picked up an honest job at Glover and Glover, and after sending an appropriately aspected follower (indicated by small tiles on their detailed info card, accessed by pressing the Y button when hovering over them) to take out my overbearing boss, I got promoted to a senior role, put in my best effort at work, and ran into a minor endgame. My character gave up on running a cult to work a high paying job at an office. To be fair, this was telegraphed, but not with total clarity - still, another run down, albeit in a better state than previous endings. Thus began my next attempt - this progressed well, fighting off rival cultists and hiding my activities from the law. I prepared to ascend, before giving up my chance for power to remain with my lover. A beautiful story, exactly what you might want from a game like this - but it took over 10 hours to get there.

The question you’ll really need to answer then is this - is it worth the investment? Cultist Simulator sits in a very strange place for me, much like the esoteric subject matter. I personally enjoy the game quite a bit, but I find it hard to recommend to all but the most experienced management game fans - it’s so stingy with instructions that it’s hard to work out any of your goals, and getting a good ending will require hours and hours of play on top of any background research you think you’ll need. That doesn’t mean I don’t love it, and if you can handle the kind of insanity-inducing minutia it provides, you might just love it too. In the spirit of the game, have some purposefully vague tips for those brave enough to delve into the occult - lore can be subverted in a chain, restlessness will decay to dread but could be used in recruitment rituals, and speaking with Sulochana will freeze timers on your topic of choice. Welcome to the cult!

Pros:

• Creates an amazing atmosphere as you play

• So many variant endings and potential choices to make along the way

• Correctly managing the mass of spinning plates is so satisfying when it works

Cons:

• If you want to learn as you play, prepare for failure and constant questions

You start with a single ship unlocked and a lot of new systems to get your head around. Thankfully, the game provides adequate tutorials for you to get your first run started, although a few choices for the default control scheme do feel unnatural until you get used to them, and once you’re in control, you aren’t given guidance on how to best build your deck. Some might find this to be a negative, but as a fan of similar deckbuilding roguelikes, I appreciated the space to work things out on my own time.

For the Warp takes clear inspiration from acclaimed genre titan Slay the Spire, mixing the tight gameplay formula with the aesthetics and random encounters of FTL, but that definitely isn’t a bad thing. The regenerating energy system and cards earned at the end of each battle will be familiar to fans of Mega Crit’s excellent title, but there is plenty of innovation here too. Instead of shields disappearing at the end of your turn, you can keep them until they’re blasted away, but are limited by your vessel’s shield capacity. You also won’t be able to stock up on artefacts - your equipment is limited to a certain number of slots (3 by default) and often affects your health, shields damage and resistances by percentages, allowing for deep customisation on any given run without quite as much randomness as you might find in the inspirations. These alterations keep things interesting for experienced gamers, and really change the way you play each different kind of ship.

The map is another area where developer Massive Galaxy Studios shows off their originality. The player can navigate a grid-based system to discover enemies, random events and spaceports on their way to the warp gate, limited only by the amount of fuel they have on hand. It’s a really interesting twist that puts control much more firmly in the hands of the player. Exploring the sector feels satisfyingly strategic, weighing up the benefits of burning fuel hanging around in early areas or rushing ahead to the harder zones and risking a tough encounter wiping out your unprepared crew.

There isn’t quite the same depth of play here as with other games in the roguelike genre, but you do have several ship options and an unlockable hardcore difficulty to challenge yourself once you’ve got to grips with the game. There are even hidden ships, found through random events, and the different vessels have their own unique quirks and starting decks to play with. It’s great fun figuring out the nuances and various strategies that work best with each, even if I felt like I’d got to the bottom of it all by about 15 hours in.

The fantastic pixel art deserves a shoutout too. The game has a great atmosphere and the soundtrack varies just enough to keep things fresh for long play sessions. Really, it’s just an exceptionally polished game all round, and for a first effort on Xbox it’s pretty impressive! I’m glad I took a chance on For the Warp, and I can’t wait to see what the developers do next.

Pros:

• Brilliant strategically balanced gameplay

• Excellent audio and visuals

• Exploring the galaxy map freely is a great addition to the standard roguelike deckbuilder formula

Cons:

• Very little strategic guidance for newbies

Players will use their short range teleport to traverse meticulously constructed levels, taking out enemies with combos of short quick punches or nabbing and tossing weapons on the fly. Team Shifty (wonder how the devs came up with that?) set the tone early, letting you learn the ropes as you play by pasting controls onto the backdrop of the level. One such prompt invites you to knock on a door with an enemy behind by pressing X. Following these instructions launches that door into the hapless goon for an instant kill. It’s hilarious to play, and constantly subverts your expectations as you progress the campaign.

You’re guided by a helpful voice on the radio, Nyx, and also taunted by the aforementioned Chairman Stone as he tries to stop you ascending the building to ruin his plans. The dialogue is funny and unique, with some formulaic twists and turns that are somewhat predictable but pleasant to experience anyway, like a good roller coaster. It’s not the most original story, but it doesn’t need to be - the real star of the show is the gameplay.

It’s incredibly satisfying to beat up the mooks of Mr Shifty. Like many great ‘hardcore’ games, death is part of the process, and you’ll find it hard to put down once you start a level. There’s always a smart way to complete a room, like luring enemies into friendly fire incidents or activating explosive traps and teleporting away so that the foolish guards get caught in the aftermath. There’s variety in the goons too - starting with pistols, they upgrade to shotguns, flamethrowers and even rocket launching turrets as the game progresses. This means the combat always feels fresh, and the challenge is usually well balanced so that it’s always tricky rather than frustrating.

That’s not to say there isn’t a little bit of annoyance - I had a few lag issues in larger rooms while playing on Series S, and one particularly unfortunate crash meant I needed to restart a whole section. Still, the humour carried me through and I completed the whole game in one sitting, taking roughly three hours. The achievements encourage you to complete a flawless run of every level, which is a brutal challenge that I’m not sure I’ll ever manage. You could also try to speed through the levels faster than the devs could, although this particular chunk of gamerscore is currently bugged in the player’s favour, unlocking upon campaign completion for most folks.

In the end, I had a fantastic time with Mr Shifty, even with the few flaws along the way. The chaotic gameplay never feels like pure luck, and does a great job of making you truly feel like the hero of the story. It innovates constantly to keep things interesting and never rests on its laurels. It’s a brilliant send-up of action movies whilst also being a loving homage, a balance that is hard to master. My only complaint is that after over 7 years, we still don’t have a sequel. Maybe 2025 will be the year?

Pros:

• Stellar controls are easy to learn

• Addictive quick restart gameplay really gets you invested fast

• Writing is witty and entertaining

Cons:

• A few lag issues made certain sections much harder than they needed to be